Mag Blast!

Our desire to annihilate each other means that we are watching less TV, at least, as far as Laura and I are concerned. We have both become addicted to the Mag Blast space battle game by Fantasy Flight Games. This is a card game in which you attempt to protect a Flagship while attacking your opponent’s flagships. The last surviving flagship wins the game. Various action cards allow you to fire, draw reinforcements, or place your opponents in mine fields.

I first played this at Chip’s with Houston. It was a classic space battle. Chip was knocked out fairly early. I had a vast armada, and Houston’s meager fleet was in flames. I had one open flank, and with a meer laser – the lowest powered hit available – he was able to play a Direct Hit followed by a Catastrophic Damage card. Luke’s torpedo finds the vent shaft and the Death Star goes up in flames.

As proven in our first game, a three-player scenario is less “three scorpions in a cage” and more “wounded dog.” A player can be weakened very quickly early on, then promptly dispatched, leaving the two survivors to duke it out. It does work quite well as a two-player game. I’d like to try it with more sometime.

I bought the game over Christmas, and reluctantly, Laura gave it a try. Boardwalk and Parkplace, our local gaming Mecca, only had one copy of the original version. This afternoon I dropped back by, and they had the updated, Second Edition, which I had played at Chip’s. The new version has more ship cards, more action cards, and more flagships. More is not better in this case. The cards themselves are flimsier then the original, and the artwork is not as good, IMHO. Having more cards means that in a typical two-player game, you might not get to ones you want in one deck. You could wait many turns for resources or a reinforcement card, while your opponent decimates your fleet. The new version would be well-suited for multi-player games, but the original works best for two players.